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Asian Bank execs fear
effect of isle protests

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Officials from the Asian Development Bank say they are concerned that protests, or even talk of protests, will steal the media spotlight from the group's mission during its meeting in Honolulu in May.

The ADB, which will hold its annual meeting May 7-11 at the Hawaii Convention Center, invests about $6 billion a year in projects to fight poverty in Asia and the Pacific. The Manila-based bank, like other multinational organizations, has come under increasing criticism from environmental, indigenous rights, and political groups.

Robert H. Salamon, chief of the ADB office of external relations, said yesterday that the attention to protests often obscures the importance of the actual meetings.

Salamon is in Honolulu this week with another ADB executive, General Counsel Gerald A. Sumida, the former Honolulu attorney who joined the bank in late 1999, to meet with government officials and plan for the meeting.

The officials said they don't know whether there will be protests here but they can usually be expected. Demonstrations at ADB events only started recently and they have been nonviolent, they said.

Sumida and Brenda L. Foster, executive assistant to Gov. Ben Cayetano, said the Hawaii meeting will be a chance for Hawaii to promote itself to the 3,000-plus attendees, who will include about 400 international journalists. An exhibition at the Convention Center is planned for isle firms to show their capabilities.

There also will be non-ADB public forums for the groups critical of international economic development and ADB representatives will take part in them.

The ADB is made up of 60 member countries, ranging from the well-off ones, such as the United States and Japan, to the borrowing countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines. When it began in 1966 it financed roads, bridges and power plants, but now it concentrates on small projects to help people get food, shelter, an education and better health. It is now also fighting AIDS which is causing economic devastation in Asia, Salamon said.